Child Labour

Children Exploited All Around Us Today

Child labour is a pressing problem happening all around us today to an estimated 250 million children worldwide. Deprived of their childhood, these children are exploited to work at often hazardous working conditions for long hours everyday. The effects of such labour are unimaginable to many of us privileged enough to lead a childhood incomparable to theirs. The following are just some cases commonly found throughout India to this day.

Source: Free The Children - India http://www.ftcindia.com

Scavenging Trash

Find them thronging on the streets of bustling cities. Life lies in the dump of wastes for these thousands of little rag-pickers across the country. The bigger the city, more are they in number. The hunting ground ranges from dustbins to hospital dump-yards. Nothing is untouchable. From plastic to metals, old batteries and used surgical gloves, whatever is recyclable has its own value to them. The collection is paid for a few bucks and the cruelest of the diseases. Common are tuberculosis and skin diseases.
Handling Carbon-lead Batteries With Bare Hands

Children are never unemployed! Once collected, there is a different set working for segregation and assembling of different kinds of wastes, plastics, paper, jute, rubber, metal, glass, cotton and so on. Separating carbon-lead from used batteries is one of the commonest trades.
Exploited, Overworked And Burnt

Glass bangles are a favourite of the country women. Seven year old Renu (end right in picture), gives them shape and glare, taking them in and out of the oven for 11-12 hours everyday. She is not alone. There are 60,000 more, mostly girls, working at hundreds of bangles manufacturing units at Firozabad in Uttar Pradesh, for just Rs.10 a day. Her fingers are burnt. Bangles sell like hotcakes.
Children Made To Beg And Be Prostituted

Children, mostly crippled, belonging to poor Muslim families from districts of Murshidabad, Malda, Nadia, Birbhum and others in West Bengal are taken to Mecca to beg during the Holy Haj. For almost three months they beg for their employers from morning to midnight. The Haj ends but not their sufferings. The touts find it uneconomical to bring them back home. Left in a foreign land, they are either made to work as child labourers are thrown in prostitution.
Inhaling Poisonous Gas Everyday

Munsirhat in Howrah district of West Bengal is a large area where spectacles are made. There are 50 such units, most of them unlicensed. Ten year old Hakim Sheikh has been working here (Left in pix) for the last three years. For hours he handles varieties of acids and chemicals and inhales poisonous gas, fumes and dust gushing out of the glass grinding machines. He is one of those 6,000 children, mostly from Muslim families, employed illegally. Muslim personal law allows men to divorce their wives at the drop of a hat. Men remarry. Hakims' support their single mothers.
Manually Processing Poisonous Nut Shells

After fishing, cashew processing is the commonest trade in coastal India. The process is simple. Raw cashew is roasted at high temperatures at small shop floors and peeled manually. FTC - India carried out a survey on roughly 300 such units spread over the coastal West Bengal and adjacent districts of Orissa. The findings are shocking to say the least. Each unit employees 25-30 children peeling the nuts at intolerably high temperature. The day's wage is paid at Rs. 6 a kilogram of peeled cashew. But that is not all. Cashew shells are hard and poisonous. Initial roasting brings down the poison but not enough to save Mafisuns' driving their hammers for 10-12 hours a day. The nuts crack and the poison spills out. Tender hands, protected just by a piece of plastic sheet, turn soar. Wounds and diseases take fatal form.

Program Against Child Labour
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